


A Single Pair of Footprints

by Cookies_and_Chaos



Category: Malory Towers - Enid Blyton
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:54:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28155684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cookies_and_Chaos/pseuds/Cookies_and_Chaos
Summary: After a visit to the Carter home, Bill needs some time to herself. Written for the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge 2020, Day 9, "Nine Sullen Silences".
Relationships: Clarissa Carter/Wilhelmina "Bill" Robinson
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2
Collections: 12 Days of Christmas Challenge 2020





	A Single Pair of Footprints

Once she had washed up the last of the cutlery from lunch, Bill grabbed her coat from the coat rack and put it on. She saw, out of the corner of her eye, the way Clarissa went to say something, hesitated, and then retired back into silence.

"I shan't be long," Bill said.

Crisp grass crackled underfoot, offering a grounding sensation that Bill hadn't realised she needed so much. Leaving the stables behind her, she walked the trail down towards the beach, tugging her coat tighter around herself as the sharp winds from the sea began to pick up and bite against her skin. A hat and gloves might not have been a bad idea but Bill so often forgot about things like that. After all, what was a touch of cold in the grand scheme of things? Her brothers and she had often gone out on early Winter mornings without even a jacket of any sort, much to their mother's despair. Perhaps the biting pain of the cold thawing back to warmth when she returned and huddled around the fire was precisely what Bill needed today.

The sand shifted beneath her feet and Bill set off in the direction of Malory Towers. She wouldn't walk up from the beach, not today, but she wanted to see the school. She wanted to remember what it was like when she and Clarissa could just be themselves, together, without anyone interfering and suggesting that things need change.

Clarissa had reassured her on the train — neither of them had gotten around to learning to drive yet — that she had nothing to worry about, that her parents could suggest things to their heart's content but that didn't mean that Clarissa would ever do anything they spoke of. Bill believed her, of course she did. None of this, the preoccupation that she couldn't seem to drive from her mind, was anything about what Clarissa might or might not do. For Clarissa loved her, and Bill loved Clarissa. That much Bill could trust would always be true. It didn't make the whispers from everyone else any easier to shrug off.

All hols it had been, 'Oh Clarissa, darling, did you hear about the Durringford son? Off at university studying medicine' and 'Did you hear the youngest Wrexley boy is starting his own business?' and no-one ever actually said that they were parading the achievements of these young men in front of Clarissa to encourage her to ask more about them, but Bill and Clarissa both knew that was what it was. Bill would never be enough for Clarissa, not like _that_ , in the Carters' eyes.

Malory Towers loomed ahead, cutting an almost daunting picture against the sharp blue-grey of the morning sky. Waves chopped and churned beneath to add to the effect and Bill wondered if the school had let them drift along in a false sense of security, for they had never truly thought that anything need change once they left. Bill turned her back on the school and looked back at the line created by her footprints trailing through the sand, then followed her own path back, knowing that, if nothing else, it would surely lead her back home.


End file.
